The Kaizen Action Plan enables you to identify issues and improve performance by automatically creating action items for low scored, or noncompliant questions. Managers are then notified and can take corrective action on items they are responsible for.

How does it work?


For example, a survey about visiting a movie theatre could be set up to trigger an action item whenever a shopper scores 0% on the question "Did the staff greet you upon entering the theatre?"


Once a shopper submits their shop with a "No" answer and gets 0% for that question, a notification about the new action item will be sent to managers specified in the action plan. Managers can then visit the action item page for the question on that shop. From there, they can fill out the remediation plan and discuss a resolution.


You can check out the video instructions, and a video of an Action Plan Webinar.

How to enable it?


If you have not used the functionality before, you will need to open a support tracker so we can enable it on your system. Once that is done, you will need to enable Action Plan on a client in the Client & Form settings.



Simply scroll to the bottom of the client settings page and check Enabled next to the Kaizen Action Plan (premium) label. 


Once changes are saved, you will need to set up the action plan per survey. You can use the link provided on the client settings page, or get started from the main Admin Page and simply look up Action Plan.

Survey Setup


Once on the Action Plan management page, select a client from the dropdown.



Next, select a survey on which you want to activate the action plan on, and then use the Start Action Plan button on the Actions column.



There are a couple of steps in setting up a Kaizen Action Plan for a survey.




The first step is to decide on the Categories you will use to assign action items to.


Then, during the Survey Level Settings configuration, you will need to go through the process of Question Configuration, and Question Linking.

Categories


Simply put, a category is a way to define the severity, and the behaviour of the action item that will be created based on the shopper's answer to a question.


If we go back to our example: a shopper visited a movie theatre, and they were not greeted upon arrival, so they checked "No" for the "Did the staff greet you upon entering the theatre?" - this means the question scored 0%, and that, in turn, created an action item.


Your client decided that a bad customer service like that is not acceptable, so you want to create an action item of the highest priority. This means that a particular action item will fall under the Urgent category.



To create a category, give it a name. 


The Default Due Date lets you decide how many days after shop finalization will action items in this category be due. In other words, action items in this category will have that amount of time after finalization to be resolved.


Check or uncheck the Notification Types checkboxes to send notification of the selected type to the users that have the Notifications checkbox checked in the User Access section.


If you check the Item Due Date Reminder Notifications, a new section will open.



You will be able to input the number of days before or after the set due date that you want the system to send a reminder email.



The User Access section allows you to set the permission a user has for this category. One user can be in multiple categories and have different permissions in each. 

You can also add additional managers, as well as notification recipients.


Create your most serious category first, and your least serious category last, so that Dragon widgets can appropriately compare the severity of the categories.


To keep up with the example, we are going to create two additional categories: Major and Minor.



To open a category and edit its settings, simply click on the category name.


Once set, use the Save and Proceed to Survey-Level Configuration button on the bottom right of the page.

Survey Level Settings


The Survey Level Settings allow you to fine tune the action plan items, based on question answers.


Question Configuration 


Hit the View/Upload Question Configuration button to get started.



This opens a new window, through which you are able to edit the question configuration.


The previous categories you added will be listed, and you can also download a visual guide to help you through the process.


Use the Download Import File button to get a file you will edit, upload, and Submit.


The file you downloaded will have all questions from your survey that can be used in the Action Plan functionality.



ScoreMin and ScoreMax are scores that a question can achieve. They both range from 0 to 100, and if a question is ever scored inside the range you input, an action plan will be triggered.


Score Category determines a category to which the triggered action plan will be assigned to, when scored outside the range.


AnswerOption# can be used to specify the category to which the action input will be assigned to, if that particular answer option is selected. A zero in this row makes the question as non-actionable.



Back to our example:


If question 31 ("Did the staff greet you upon entering the theatre?") got answered with Answer option 2 (in our case, "No"), an action item will be created and assigned to category 1 ("Urgent").


On the same note, if a question 131 ("Were the restrooms clean and adequately stocked?") is answered with answer option 2 (in our case another a "No"), another action item will be created and assigned to category 3 ("Minor").


Note how there is nothing set for ScoreMin, ScoreMax, or ScoreCategory - instead, we focused on the answer options.



Looking at the first green question 81 ("How would you rate the comfort of the seating in the theatre?"), we're saying that if the score percentage is between 2 and 4, create an action item and place it into category 1 ("Urgent"). 


For question 111 ("On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate the overall quality of the food and drinks?"), if the score percentage is between 0 and 90, create an action item and place it into category 2 ("Major").


Save your Excel file and upload it.


 If all is well, the page will display your current question configuration.

Question linking


The other Survey Level setting is Question linking.




Hit the View/Upload Question Linking button to get started. Unlike on the previous page, you will need to create a file on your own, as one is not provided for you.



You can download a visual guide to help you through the process, and simply use the Submit button once you are ready to upload the file.


Once uploaded, the page will display the existing setup.



Looking at our example:


Question 31 ("Did the staff greet you upon entering the theatre?") is linked to question 41 ("Have you ever approached a staff member for assistance during your visit?"), and 51 ("How satisfied were you with the help provided?").


Question 111 ("On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate the overall quality of the food and drinks? "), is linked to question 101 ("Please select the food items you purchased during your visit:"). 


For now, keep the correlation in mind, and we will get back to it once we complete the process.



Once you are comfortable with the survey level settings, use the Finish button at the bottom right of the page.

Accessing and Viewing Action Items


Once a shop has been completed and put into the Finalized status, action items will be created. 


To view the created action items, their categories, linked questions and so on, you can either use a Classic Report or one of the Action Plan Dragon Widgets. The widgets are: Action Item Counts, Action Item Counts by Level, Action Item Log, Action Item Progress, and Action Items - Risk Distribution.



Looking at our example, we can see that questions 31 and 111 did get their action items created.


During question configuration, we said that if question 31 ("Did the staff greet you upon entering the theatre?") got answered with Answer option 2 ("No"), an action item will be created and assigned to category 1 ("Urgent").


For question 111 ("On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate the overall quality of the food and drinks?"), if the score percentage is between 0 and 90 (the question scored a 2), create an action item and place it into category 2 ("Major").



Use the View/Edit Details to see the linked questions.


During question linking, we linked question 31 with questions 41 and 51, and question 111 with question 101.


QID 31QID 111


Beside the Details section, managers that have access can also use the Discussion section right below it. 



This allows the manager to respond to the issue, change the status of the item, as well as decide on the next person in line for the remediation plan.